Optical beam splitter cubes are optical components by means of which a light beam can be split into two partial beams or two radiation paths can be combined into a single beam. These can be beams with different polarizations and/or different wavelengths. A particular advantage is that the transmitted beam passes through the beam splitter cube without beam displacement or beam deflection.
Until now, to produce beam splitter cubes, prisms were produced individually, optionally polished, coated and then two such prisms were cemented together at their base to produce a beam splitter cube.
However, this production is elaborate and thus expensive, which, until now, has limited the use of such beam splitter cubes almost exclusively to application cases in which the relatively high production costs are still economically justifiable. At the same time, it was not possible until now to use the splitter cubes in very cost-sensitive application cases because of their elaborate production method.
To produce optical elements, a molding method is known in the state of the art from WO 2011/085880 A1, in which a radiation-curable material, for example UV-curable plastic, is molded. With this method, optical components are produced which consist of a plurality of individual optical elements which lie next to each other, spaced apart from each other, on a substrate. The embodiment examples of the named document comprise mini-lens arrays which are molded on a glass substrate. The extent of the height of these optical elements is small compared with the thickness of the glass substrate.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,028,708 A and DE 10 2011 087 846 A1 describe a method for producing beam splitter cubes.